November 24, 2013

Dear Family,

This week was pretty CRAZY, a lot of things happened, so much I hardly know where to begin. I'll start from the beginning... So we made contact with T-Bone again which was really good and we set up an appointment to meet with him. Then as we were tracting we looked up this other woman who kept telling us to come back later and she finally had time and let us in. Her Husband ended up coming out and he was super interesting. We were just talking getting to know each other better, telling them why we're serving in Hungary and then we asked them what they did for work. BB (the woman who let us in) said that she was a stay at home mom and then told her husband to tell them what he did. He just straight up says that he does "Fekete Munka" or he pretty much works in the black market and then he said something about drugs . . . I was just like alright, alright. My comp asked if he likes his work and he said that he doesn't, but he does what he needs to provide for his family, which I understood. He asked us a ton of questions and then asked us if we liked süti (like Hungarian baked goods, cept tons better). he said that he would make us some next time; he really seemed to like us. Then we said that wed make him some American süti or brownies. Later he took his shirt off and showed us his tattoos all around his arms and they were pretty crazy and he also has murderer tattooed on his arm (So I hereby nickname him "G", to protect his identity). Other than that it was a really good lesson. We just focused on family and prayer, because he said that he really didn't pray to often and just said recited prayers, so hopefully he's been praying. I can't wait to meet with them again!

Then on Thursday we went down to Győr for zone training which was kinda fun but, eats up our entire day with 2 long train rides, but it was nice to see some other missionaries again like my old comp Depallens, which was sweet to see how he was doing.

Then on Friday we met with John again and a member who likes to talk a ton, so they were both just talking like crazy and my brain was exploding just trying to follow them. We also taught Tbone again, which was super good because his mom was watching his 2 year old son who goes crazy during every lesson. We had a pretty good lesson with him, because he knows that there's something, but he just doesn't know what and we kept just telling him that he needs to pray and read every day, especially to pray with faith and a desire to really know the truth.

Then on Saturday we had splits. I split with Elder Olsen who has been in Hungary 5 weeks less than me and it was a very interesting day just because we both aren't very good at the language yet. But the entire day we just went finding and actually found some pretty cool people. One boy we tracted into wants to meet and then in the rest of the building we were tracting in there were a lot of people who were like aww I'm busy right now but come next week, which is surprising because most people are like jaj and shut the door. Then we met this man who loved the NFL and asked if we had a team in Utah and I was like sadly no, and then Olsen said how he was from Wisconsin and he loves the Green bay Packers. The man was like, that is my team and it was an instant man bond even though he was Hungarian and Olsen was American. Sports bringing the world together. But in the end we were surprised that we could actually understand and communicate as well as we did with people. It was a pretty good confidence booster. Language LEVEL UP!!

Then Sunday . . . was district conference and a member of the Seventy came to Szombathely to speak. Elder Walker and his wife both talked and it was really amazing. Turns out President Smith (our mission pres) lived next to the Walkers for 25 years and were super close friends. Sister Walker was super nice too and was talking to me for a while, she was pretty cool. Also, TBone brought his soon to be wife and their baby to the conference which was super awesome! The members talked to them a lot too, so it was super good. But Elder Walker gave a couple awesome tips in the priesthood leadership meeting on how we need to strengthen our branches if we ever want a temple here in Hungary and also need to attend the temple more even though it's hard. Then he gave an awesome talk during conference about so many great things, but the main thing that stuck out to me was about Hope. I always considered hope as pretty much the same as faith. I didn't see much of a difference, but elder Walker talked about how we should hope that everything will work out and is going to be good. SO I really took it to try to be more positive and to hope more that "every little thing is going to be alright" -Bob Marley... But all in all it was just super amazing.

Sunday night we brought TBone and his family to the Szvobodas home where we ate dinner and had a really good time. We gave a little spiritual thought, then brother Szvoboda just went ham when an elder asked him how he met the missionaries. He gave his entire story and talked about how even though his missionary only baptized 2 people, brother Szvoboda has 9 children and so far 5 of them went on missions and the others will. It was crazy to see how just changing one person for the better causes a wave of change on many others. It's amazing to see also how strong Brother Szvobodas testimony is and how great a man he is. His story just struck me to the core even though I only understood like 75 percent of it.

Anyway, this week was pretty sweet, and the Christmas vendors actually are out now so were going to check that out today. Hope it will be sweet. We do sorta have a senior couple in this area but not in our city, they live in Sopron I believe. Also thanks for the information about our heritage it will really come in handy and is interesting. Oh yea, I think I've almost hit my 6 month mark, hoorah. I just can't wait til Jézuska comes.

Hope your all doing awesome and having fun!

sok szeretettel
Waldvogel Elder